'Image as Voice: Perspectives on Lithium Extraction in Argentina and Zimbabwe' is a multi-sited outreach and knowledge mobilization initiative centered on Photo Voice (PV) methods to amplify the lived experiences of communities affected by lithium mining. Building on PV materials co-created in 2025--26 through mentored community photography across five sites, the project mobilizes visual and narrative evidence for policy engagement and public dissemination. Activities include community and national workshops, mobile and institutional exhibitions, public seminars, multilingual policy briefs, a photobook, and digital outputs such as podcasts and infographics.

The project aims to foreground marginalized perspectives and strengthen policy debates by creating platforms for dialogue among policymakers, researchers, community members, NGOs, and industry stakeholders across Argentina, Zimbabwe, and Canada. By linking images with testimonies and critical reflections, it facilitates more inclusive discussions on the local impacts of global lithium supply chains.

The initiative responds to mounting challenges in the Global South linked to rapid lithium extraction driven by demand for electric vehicles, energy storage, and digital technologies. Although Argentina and Zimbabwe have become major exporters, governance frameworks have lagged behind investment and production. Policy priorities have emphasized economic growth and foreign investment while often neglecting local socio-economic and environmental concerns. Consequences for communities include environmental degradation, water stress, pollution, land dispossession, and disruption of traditional livelihoods. Meanwhile, anticipated economic benefits such as employment and value-chain participation have been limited and uneven.

A key driver of these inequities is the marginalization of community voices in policymaking, alongside a lack of research capturing local experiences. Extractive governance in both countries has historically been shaped by political and business elites, with weak mechanisms for meaningful consultation. This has produced a disconnect between national development narratives and lived realities, compounded by conventional research approaches that overlook place-based knowledge and face barriers such as language and literacy.

The project addresses these gaps by positioning PV as both a research method and a tool for advocacy. By integrating community-generated images and interpretations into workshops, exhibitions, and publications, it prioritizes local knowledge in debates on resource governance. This approach contributes to the democratization of knowledge production and generates compelling evidence for engaging policy audiences and the public. Multilingual and mixed-format outputs ensure accessibility for local communities while extending reach to broader audiences.

To enhance analytical rigour and foster mutual learning, the project also promotes cross-regional exchange between Argentine and Zimbabwean communities. Despite shared experiences---including the dominance of Chinese mining firms---there has been little direct engagement between affected communities. Cross-border workshops and collaborative platforms will enable the sharing of strategies, strengthen collective capacity, and support more effective engagement with governments and industry.

At a critical moment in the global energy transition, the project seeks to rebalance whose knowledge informs resource governance. By embedding community-generated evidence in policy processes and transnational dialogue, it advances a more accountable and grounded approach to lithium extraction---one that aligns development ambitions with lived realities and strengthens communities' ability to shape their futures.

Image as Voice: Perspectives on Lithium Extraction in Argentina and Zimbabwe is a program of outreach activities which aims to foreground and integrate new local evidence and knowledge on the impact of critical minerals extraction on mining-affected communities, traditional authorities, and local government in the important lithium-producing countries of Argentina and Zimbabwe. This proposed Connection Grant project seeks to mobilize Photovoice (PV) images and accompanying knowledge and research produced from a SSHRC-funded study on the environmental, social, and economic risks of lithium extraction at local level in Argentina and Zimbabwe in 2025-26, to amplify the perspectives and interests of communities which typically have been marginalized in policy debates, regulatory practices, and research literature. The project will make timely contributions to current policy debates in Argentina, Zimbabwe, and other Global South countries where global demands for lithium and other energy transition minerals are increasingly perceived by leading stakeholders as opportunities for socioeconomic development (IMF 2024; UNCTAD 2025).

The primary goal of the project’s KMb efforts is to strengthen the presence of marginalized lithium-mining affected communities in policymaking spaces, regulatory practices, and the research literature by mobilizing community-based knowledge derived from the PV study to increase community capacity for research and policy development regarding their social, environmental, and economic needs. A second goal is to integrate PV evidence and knowledge derived from these communities’ perspectives and interests into policy dialogues to raise awareness among various stakeholders and audiences in Argentina and Zimbabwe. A third goal of the project is to foster cross border and comparative dialogues within and between communities in Argentina and Zimbabwe on the challenges, opportunities, lessons, and best practices associated with lithium extraction. Overall, the project’s KMb strategy seeks to amplify local communities’ presence in policy research and development, and strengthen their ability to participate to engender more effective and coordinated community responses to lithium extraction and government regulatory institutions.

Project Rationale

As part of their comparative study of the socio-economic and environmental impacts of hard rock and brine-based lithium extraction in Zimbabwe and Argentina, respectively, the applicant, co-applicant and collaborators employed PhotoVoice (PV) research to generate deeper insight into community perspectives that are often overlooked in conventional analyses. PV is a participatory action methodology that uses image-based evidence to enable marginalized groups to document, interpret, and communicate their lived realities, with the aim of catalyzing policy and social change (Wang and Burris 1997). In the comparative study, “community photographers”—residents of mining-affected areas trained in basic photographic and analytical techniques—played a central role in producing knowledge. By capturing images of their everyday environments and experiences, they presented dimensions of extraction that are frequently obscured in conventional research, including subtle ecological transformations, informal labour dynamics, and disruptions to social and cultural life. Through a series of facilitated PV workshops, participants collectively analyzed their photographs, developed accompanying narratives, and identified shared priorities and concerns. This iterative process transformed visual material into grounded evidence that could be mobilized in dialogue with policymakers, civil society organizations, and industry actors.

An important goal of the PV approach is to mobilize community-based knowledge and evidence generated from PV-styled engagements with stakeholders to catalyze social change. This is facilitated by presenting policymakers and other influential actors in the policymaking process with visual evidence and related critical interpretation (Castleden et al. 2008; Hergenrather et al. 2009; Wang and Burris 1997). PV’s method of data collection and analysis through photography and participatory discussion is distinguished from traditional research methodologies by participants’ direct oversight of what is photographed, which photographs are seen as critical for discussion, and the pace and place of discussion (Castleden et al. 2008; Creighton et al. 2018). By these means, the PV approach democratizes research processes which traditionally have been dominated by non-community researchers (Creighton et al. 2018). PV’s use of images and discussions make it an ideal KMb tool as it does not require participants to write or speak in a dominant language, providing marginalized and underserved communities with greater opportunities to participate in the research process (Castleden et al. 2008; Creighton et al. 2018; Foster et al. 2023; Wang and Burris 1997). Additionally, photography can enable participants to elucidate perspectives and experiences which cannot be easily articulated through text (e.g. interview scripts, ethnographic descriptions) and are typically neglected by traditional research methodologies that are more focused on critical knowledge gaps in existing policy and research models (Castleden et al. 2008; Creighton et al. 2018; Foster et al. 2023; Harley 2012; Huber et al. 2023; Wang and Burris 1997; Sutton-Brown 2014). PV has also been shown to positively affect participant researchers’ self-confidence and awareness of their social environment and foster social networks that are vital in catalyzing social change (Budig et al. 2018; Castleden et al. 2008; Foster-Fishman et al. 2005). Taken together, these strengths position PV not only as an inclusive research methodology but also as a strategic tool for engaging with and shaping policy debates in rapidly evolving and high-stakes sectors—such as the global expansion of lithium extraction.

Since the late 2010s, accelerated production of electric vehicles, new energy storage technologies, and digital infrastructure have driven rapidly rising global demand for lithium (IEA 2025; ZELO 2025). These market factors are compounded by the geographical concentration of lithium supply chains; heightened geopolitical competition; and lithium’s non-substitutable role in energy and economic security (IEA 2025). Despite rapid growth in lithium production and investment in Argentina and Zimbabwe, policy reform has lagged, with regulatory frameworks continuing to reflect the priorities of donors, development agencies, and the mining industry. The needs and risks faced by heavily impacted host communities—including environmental degradation, disruption of agriculture-based livelihoods, limited employment creation and local upstream linkages, and acute pollution shocks—have received insufficient and inconsistent attention. The increasing asymmetry between benefits and risks is further rooted in challenging policy legacies: in the aftermath of the early-2000s commodities supercycle, “resource nationalism” strategies in both countries were largely shaped by political elites. Consequently, throughout the 2010s, the interests and socio-economic rights of mining communities were frequently marginalized in favor of foreign investors. This marginalization has only deepened with the surge in demand for “critical minerals” following the COVID-19 pandemic (Johnson et al. 2024; Saunders and Caramento 2017; Saunders et al. 2023; Saunders 2017; Warnecke-Berger et al. 2023). This intensifying marginalization underscores the urgent need for grounded, community-driven evidence to inform and reshape evolving policy frameworks and debates around lithium extraction. This project recognizes the vital importance of bringing to bear rigorous local-level evidence that emphasizes mining communities’ expectations of lithium ‘development’, and highlights their experiences of the social, environmental, and economic costs associated with its extraction in mine-adjacent sites. The inclusion of these voices and knowledges is critical in current policy debates in both countries, where formal national lithium strategies are being formulated amid weak community consultation, while local land dispossession, negative environmental impacts and disappointing local economic benefits are accelerating (Escosteguy et al. 2022; Matanzima 2024; Obaya et al. 2021; Johnson et al. 2024; Kramarz et al. 2021). Understanding the impacts of lithium mining globally is especially important for Canada because it underpins the country’s transition to clean energy while helping ensure that environmental protection, Indigenous rights, and community well-being are not compromised. Careful assessment also supports responsible resource governance and strengthens Canada’s role in secure, sustainable critical mineral supply chains.

To foster and learn from cross-border and comparative dialogues among communities directly, the project will convene several outreach activities. The Project’s key outreach activities will include:

● Two national policy workshops accompanied by mobile photo exhibitions in Argentina (at the University of Salta) and Zimbabwe (at the Zimbabwe Environmental Law Organization)
● Four public research seminars and accompanying mobile photo exhibitions at York University, the University of Guelph, University of Jujuy, and the Zimbabwe School of Mines will present findings from the PV research to largely scholarly audiences.
● Three policy briefs in English, Spanish, and Shona that feature the PV research and comparative lithium study’s findings will be produced and distributed in physical (at workshops and seminars) and digital formats (on applicant and co-applicants’ respective project websites).
● One photograph book with interpretative text in English, Spanish, and Shona that showcases and contextualizes the PV study’s photographs, which will be distributed in both physical and digital formats.
● A mobile exhibition of photographs derived from the PV project’s work in Argentina and Zimbabwe which will be used for outreach activities.
● Production of podcasts, infographics, and accompanying social media materials will be hosted on the York University and AEGT websites, which provide information on the PV project and profile the project’s community-photographers and the PV research and training team.

The audiences targeted by the project's outreach include:
• Policymakers and political decision makers at national, regional, local, and
customary/traditional authority levels in Argentina and Zimbabwe;
• Lithium mining sector businesses in Argentina and Zimbabwe, including foreign and local miners, and the local mining services sector;
• Mining-affected communities in Argentina and Zimbabwe, including mine-hosting areas mineworkers, informal mine workers, and displaced households;
• Civil society groups, NGOs, and community-based organizations in Argentina, Zimbabwe, and Canada working on resource governance issues;
• Scholars, students, and independent researchers working on resource governance issues in extractives sectors in Argentina, Zimbabwe, Canada and the Global South; and,
• Public audiences in Argentina, Zimbabwe, and Canada.

Surging global demand for minerals used in renewable energy technologies represents unprecedented opportunities and challenges for Southern Africa, home to substantial concentrations of these materials. Experts anticipate that rising international consumption will sustain demand and prices until mid-century due to the impact of the “Green Transition”, the strategic shift led by industrialized countries towards the replacement of carbon-based fuels and energy generation with renewable energy sources and technologies. African exports of these “critical raw materials” (CRMs) have increased seven-fold in the past two decades, with a forecast rise in demand of nearly 600% by 2050 for key exports like cobalt. Yet as Southern Africa emerges as a priority destination for global CRM miners and traders, there are growing concerns about the capacity of African governments to regulate the foreign-dominated industry and ensure their countries share equitably in the benefits of its unparalleled growth. Recent African iterations of “extractivism” – national development strategies that rely heavily on revenues derived from mineral exports – produced disappointing results in the 2010s, delivering weak economic growth, few opportunities for local miners, businesses and workers, and poor fiscal support for the strengthening of state social services. Contributing factors in these negative and politically destabilizing outcomes, including weak state capacity, the disproportionately influential role of mining companies in policy implementation, and the marginalisation of key domestic mining and social interests from policy-making processes, remain in place. They now threaten the potential of future CRM-driven growth in the region.

For updates and further information on this project, please visit our website: www.aegt.ca, and subscribe to our Newsletter, Social Media, Critical Minerals Seminar Series, AEGT Podcastd, Working Papers and other information products.

Building on the insights of a multidisciplinary team of partners in place since 2018 (SSHRC Partnership Development Grant 2020, SSHRC Connection Grant 2018), this partnership proposes to study the dynamics of MEMs in four key Southern Africa producers; the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Our team of 9 partners and 22 participants in 5 countries includes academics, civil society researchers and activists, and public policy researchers. We will address research gaps identified by the Partnership Development Grant in four policy areas critical for MEMs: (1) the formalization and incorporation of Artisanal and Small-scale Mining into MEM supply chains; (2) the reframing of mining taxation to leverage revenues and fund expanded social services; (3) the fostering of links between domestic industry and MEMs; and (4) the engagement of transnational frameworks and regulations with the aim of expanding national policy space. Drawing on our partners’ extensive links with domestic mining interests and actors, this will be the first research initiative in Southern Africa focused on bringing local stakeholders’ experiences and expectations of MEMs into the heart of regional policy debates. Building on our partners’ strong records in supporting policy-making processes, community outreach and research training for civil society organizations, we will engage a diverse range of stakeholders with the aim of transforming policy debates into action.

The Partnership’s first objective is to create high-quality research supporting the translation of African MEM policy debates into action. We will do this by addressing critical research and knowledge gaps around ASM activities, MEM taxation, Green industrial linkages and evolving global regulatory frameworks, with the aim of providing evidence, research training and other capacity-building to support the implementation and consolidation of policy reforms. Our second objective is to support more inclusive policy-making by strengthening the participation of diverse mining interests, social groups and citizens who have historically been excluded from policy-making processes. We will use knowledge mobilization (KMb) and research tools designed to target specific stakeholders and improve their capacity to contribute to our research – for example Photovoice, a visual data collection tool which has been used effectively by several of the Partnership’s team members in their research on ASM actors and rural communities. Our third objective is to facilitate the cross-border sharing in Southern Africa and internationally of new research, experiences and policy innovations in critical areas of MEM management (see Research Clusters below). We will build on the PDG’s experience, which found that regional ‘cross-pollination’ of research both augmented local research capacity and strengthened regional policy networks. The Partnership’s objectives align with those of SSHRC’s Insight Program by promoting KMb activities with potentially far-reaching political, economic and social impacts and benefits, and supporting the high-quality training of students and emerging scholars on issues critical to current societal challenges in Southern Africa and Canada. SSHRC’s Connection Program goals are echoed in the Partnership’s commitment to engaging governments and social actors via diverse forms of KMb that seek to improve access to our research and deepen its constructive impact and influence. Our goals also align with the partners’ objectives. Our four African core partners, the Centre d'Expertise en Gestion Minière–CEGEMI (DRC), Institute for Resources Assessment-University of Dar es Salaam (Tanzania), Southern African Institute for Policy and Research–SAIPAR (Zambia) and Zimbabwe Environmental Law Organisation– ZELO (Zimbabwe), will use the Partnership to deepen their participation in MEM policy debates and strengthen capacity-building links with local mining sector stakeholders. Our three thematic partners, the Intergovernmental Forum on Mining, Minerals, and Sustainable Development-IGF, Southern African Resource Watch-SARW and Training and Research Support Centre-TARSC, have key mandates in research and policy advocacy. They will benefit from new research in their areas of specialization and from expanded access to regional and local networks, particularly those involving rural communities. The Partnership’s goals reflect the social justice and global research objectives embedded in the academic plans of the Canadian partner, the University of Ottawa (Transformation 2030) and the host institution, York University (Building a Better Future).

Resource Nationalism and African Mining Policy Innovations: Mobilizing New Research and Engaging Key Stakeholders is a program of outreach activities which seeks to mobilize new knowledge, comparative research methodologies and policy interventions related to African mining reforms involving resource nationalism in the 2000s. The project's key materials were co-created by an African-Canadian partnership of scholars and community-based researchers in the mineral-rich countries of Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, which I led as Principal Investigator. Distribution will include the presentation and circulation of Policy Briefs on Resource Nationalism in African national and regional networks, the convening of policy workshops for discussion of research findings and recommendations at national level, the holding of an international conference on Comparative Resource Nationalism(s) in the Global South in the 21st Century, and the publication of the conference proceedings in a monograph collection.

The proposed project now seeks to mobilize this evidence by (1) supporting national debates and inclusive policy-making processes in the three countries and more widely in Africa, and encouraging cross-pollination of ideas across borders in Southern Africa; (2) engaging the Canadian government, donors and NGOs around the PDG's findings and policy implications; and, (3) enriching the wider scholarly literature on resource nationalism and the extractive industries via the foregrounding of recent African experiences. To achieve this, the project will engage diverse mining reform audiences through multiple venues, each of which has been selected to most effectively reach specific stakeholders, including governments, large and small-scale miners, local mine supply businesses, and mining labour and social justice activists.

For more information on the project's materials and activities, please visit: https://resourcenationalism.ca/

In the 2000s Canada developed legislative and regulatory measures to enhance transparency and encourage corporate social responsibility by national mining firms overseas. Recent initiatives, including Extractive Sector Transparency Measures Act and the Canadian Ombudsman for Responsible Enterprise, have promised to improve financial and contract transparency, strengthen miner-host country trust, and open paths to constructive engagement with host governments, communities and civil society organisations. These moves come at a time when many mineral-rich developing countries are experiencing a wave of 'resource nationalism', in which local governments, businesses, mining communities and policy activists are demanding greater local distribution of benefits from foreign mining. This project investigates the convergence of these two trends -Canadian regulatory innovation and rising host country demands on mining investors - in the context of Southern Africa, a key destination of recent Canadian offshore mining activity and a region currently enmeshed in resource nationalist mining reforms.

The project studies three African countries with significant Canadian mining operations, Tanzania, Zambia and Zambia, and investigates the changing relationships of Canadian companies with local mining stakeholders. Large, medium and small-scaled Canadian firms will be studied with the aim of gaining insights into the challenges faced and strategies developed by different segments of the Canadian offshore mining sector. The project traces the dynamics of miner-host country engagements, and aims to illuminate the key drivers and forces at play in the African context and link evolving stakeholder relations and mining regulations to shifting development outcomes. By this means the project seeks to determine the impacts of Canadian mining reforms on host country governments and mining stakeholders, and the strategies and practices of Canadian offshore miners.

Since the early 2000s, resurgent international minerals markets, disappointing tax revenues and weak economic spillovers from the mining sector have contributed to a rising wave of 'Resource Nationalism' (RN) in mineral-rich countries. RN refers to the use of discretionary policies by governments to regulate and control the resource industries with the aim of achieving economic and political benefits. While governments, local business and civil society in many countries have broadly called for the strengthening of benefits from mining, states' policy interventions have differed significantly in practice and have resulted in diverse development outcomes. In Africa there is renewed focus by governments, social stakeholders and international development agencies on how to harness the mineral sector's potential. Typically, however, these national-level debates have been isolated from and mostly uninformed by each other. The evidence surrounding recent policy practices and their outcomes has been scattered, anecdotal and thin. The proposed project seeks to address knowledge gaps in RN policy debates in Southern Africa and facilitate the flow of information surrounding RN innovations across national borders.

The project consolidates a partnership of leading RN research organisations in Canada and Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe, three mineral-rich countries where policy debates and innovations now feature prominently. Led by Prof Richard Saunders, the project team includes 5 co-applicants, 6 partner organisations and 9 specialist collaborators spread across the 4 participating countries. The project team will identify key research gaps and facilitate comparative research of recent policy experiences in Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Through the partners' research and advocacy links with regional networks of mining stakeholders and government policy processes, the project will actively engage with national and regional debates by providing new evidence and insights generated by the research. The strength of the partnership lies in the diverse capacities and expertise of its partners and research team. These include some of Canada's leading research units and scholars working on RN and mining in Africa, internationally-renown non-governmental research and advocacy organisations based in Southern Africa, and senior and emerging scholars based at universities in the region. Multidisciplinary expertise within the partnership is reflected in the project's plan for research, training and knowledge mobilisation. Research collaboration will be organised under 3 working groups focused on a variety of themes, with each group led by two co-applicants, one based in Canada and one in an African case country. Africa-based collaborators, specialists in the areas covered by the working groups, will advise and assist the groups in their research.

For more information on the project, its participating partners and researchers, and their findings, please visit the project website: https://resourcenationalism.ca/

Five main outcomes emerged from this partnership development project:

1. Establishment of a partner network to support research on contemporary resource nationalism (RN), the distribution of findings to policy-making processes, and the enrichment of public debate in Southern Africa on extractive resources and their role in promoting wider development.

2. Contribution of original insights on RN to scholarly debate and knowledge: The proposed comparative research will generate unique evidence on contemporary varieties of RN and their developmental outcomes, and underpin new theorization of the origins and impacts of RN politics and associated policy processes. By broadening the scope of RN research and demonstrating the need for more careful attention to the local dynamics of policy bargaining involving a range of stakeholders and constraining structures, the project will enrich scholarly debates on contemporary extractives policy-making and suggest alternative approaches to research methodologies on RN.

3. Strengthening the research, dissemination and policy engagement capacity of partners: The project will provide multiple opportunities for strengthening research collaboration and information sharing among partners, and between partner organisations, project participants and mining sector stakeholders. It will facilitate collective assessment of country experiences leading to the bridging of research gaps. Working group participants will share research and policy innovations, discuss best practices and explore the potential for new policy-oriented research collaborations to inform wider debates. These represent excellent opportunities for productive interaction among scholars (senior and emerging, African and Canadian), policy practitioners and civil society activists.

4. Knowledge Mobilization (KM) through publications, websites, conferences, and social media: The PI and co-applicants, all of whom are experienced in publishing scholarly volumes and special issues of peer-reviewed journals, will publish 2 edited collections of papers with scholarly presses; including a Special Issue of a peer-reviewed journal mid-way through the project, and an edited monograph at its conclusion. Panels on RN will be mounted at scholarly conferences in Canada and the USA, and a wrap-up conference will be held at York University. To enable wider access to project findings by academic and popular audiences in Canada, Africa and internationally, papers and other research materials will be made available via the project website hosted by York University. KM will also be facilitated by in-country policy workshops and briefings; a social media strategy involving policy briefings, information packs and research updates from the project; and the participation of researchers (year 3) in the African Mining Indaba, the leading annual all-Africa conference on the mining sector. By disseminating materials through participants' multi-stakeholder networks, the project will reach a wide range of actors engaged in mining reform in Southern Africa and beyond. The team sees this as part of the first steps in building an international research network on resource nationalism.

5. Training and mentoring of students and emerging scholars: The training and mentoring of graduate student researchers through pairings with co-applicants and collaborators is a significant outcome of the project. The inclusion of graduate researchers offers a rare opportunity for student mentorship and on-the-ground training. Nine students in Canada and Africa will be involved as research assistants. Three co-applicants and 2 collaborators are emerging scholars and will benefit directly from the mentorship of the 3 senior scholars.